President Trump's opinion of NASA's 2024 moon mission seems to have changed quite a bit in a matter of weeks.
Trump on Friday tweeted that NASA should "NOT be talking about going back to the moon" because "we did that 50 years ago." Instead, he said NASA should focus on "bigger things," including "Mars (of which the Moon is a part)," a confusing turn of phrase that might be a reference to the fact that NASA says "exploration of the moon and Mars is intertwined."
But this tweet downplaying the moon mission was surprising considering just three weeks ago, Trump proudly declared that "we are going back to the moon."
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The Trump administration in March announced it was targeting 2024 for a mission to the moon rather than the previous goal of 2028, with Trump asking for more money for NASA in furtherance of this goal, although it has become increasingly unclear whether this new timeline is actually feasible.
Now, Trump seems to no longer support this endeavor or is at the very least encouraging NASA to focus on its "bigger" plans more than this mission his administration has been pushing. Like plenty of Trump's Twitter content, this odd tweet might appear to have come out of nowhere, but it seems to have been directly inspired by a Lou Dobbs segment.
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